


Halo; Dust & Echoes

by insomniacOlympian



Category: Halo (Video Games) & Related Fandoms
Genre: Book: Halo: First Strike, Book: Halo: The Fall of Reach, F/M, Halo 1, Halo CE, Halo Combat Evolved, Halo Lore, Halo: CE, Halo: Combat Evolved, Other, Post-Game: Halo 1, References to Halo (Video Games)
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-07-27
Updated: 2020-07-27
Packaged: 2021-03-05 23:34:58
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,275
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/25543711
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/insomniacOlympian/pseuds/insomniacOlympian
Summary: Cortana & John aren't feeling that great after slaughtering thousands of alien soldiers & being unable to save the crew they arrived on Halo with & both have major survivors guilt for different reasons.They end up talking about it.
Relationships: Cortana & John-117 | Master Chief, Cortana/John-117 | Master Chief
Comments: 4
Kudos: 15





	Halo; Dust & Echoes

She hated herself for asking this but she had to.

"Fancy a look?" Cortana asked the Master Chief. 

He didn't reply but she could detect the flurry of brain waves as he felt that yes, he would like one - needed to see what they'd done and was coming off of an adrenaline rush, his heart still beating wildly. 

She could tell all of that was from what had just happened in the last few minutes, as well as everything that had happened in the last few days.

Actually, Cortana could tell everything about the Spartan besides his own thoughts - it was the only privacy he had, with her data-chip inside of the neural lace in his neck. She'd have to ask him how he felt about that, sometime. 

The A.I. braced herself as her partner conceded to giving her a nod in acknowledgement and walked over to the window of the Longsword, his eyes, her chip & his neural uplink letting both of them stare out into space and at the crumbling ring world in front of them. 

The one they'd just destroyed. 

Halo.

"Alpha Halo," according to the data in its control room.

An entire world destroyed in front of her & the Master Chief. John. 

All because of them, too.

Absolutely & undeniably necessary through anyone's lens if its status as a galaxy killing superweapon was explained - not to mention full of the most infectious parasite anyone in Human history - in galactic history - had ever encountered.

Just an uninhabited, alien world that had been long abandoned, anyway. 

An amazing alien world that was an artificial marvel and a work of genius, created by a species long dead, which was responsible for all Human - and perhaps almost all current galactic - life.

Which was also partly responsible for the fact all of that life had been created - recreated, - anyway, since it was part of the weapons system that'd killed the life that needed replacing. 

Since said parasite had almost killed everything in the Milky Way.

The enormity of the horrifying experiences & revelations she and John had encountered would force a hole in her throat if she had - or if she still had one, she thought wryly.

This would also be the place he - both of them, actually - would always remember coming to after Reach, was her next thought. 

Cortana was about to speak up but John beat her to it. 

"Did anyone else make it?" He asked.

She'd already been doing so but didn't bother to phrase it that way. It was unnecessary and would be rude, given the circumstances. 

Something to share with him later though, she thought. The implications of A.I. versus biological Human time would be something Cortana knew John would appreciate and find very interesting.

"Scanning." Was what she said.

Then the scan actually finished. If there were any.. Gods.

"Just dust and echoes." The woman said flatly, all processes besides automatic ones that weren't this conversation out of her thought matrix now.

"We're all that's left." She told John - and for the briefest, most horrifying moment she realized she couldn't give her partner a hug in order to comfort him - or receive one in turn, either.

Cortana deleted the thought instantly, then paused and deleted the entire thought process that would let her know she'd had it in the 1st place.

"We did what we had to do." Was what she landed on, aware of how uncharacteristically flat her voice was and how empty the words sounded even though they were completely true. 

They'd saved all life in the Galaxy - at the cost of destroying ancient history and slaughtering thousands of Covenant soldiers. There wasn't a single other Human survivor that they knew of, off of her first scan. 

The ending of that last thought steadied her and managed to remove any speculation it might offshoot. 

"For Earth. An entire Covenant armada obliterated.."

"And the Flood. We had no choice."

Cortana wondered if her companion could tell that she was trying to convince herself as much as him, not that she actually needed convincing anyway.

Had he picked up on her phrasing in the Control Room, during the Two Betrayals he & Guilty Spark had given each other? We're all equally edible - not you're all.

Just knowledge of the Logic Plague would be something that'd plague her until she talked to him about it. As if rampancy as inevitability wasn't bad enough, it could be created as well. 

Then again, she could also talk to Dr. Hasley about it if she didn't want to give John another cross to bear, if her "mother" - 

(sister? twin? Original?) 

\- had managed to escape Reach. 

Reach.

"Halo. ... It's finished." She summed up gamely, hoping that the fact would comfort her partner in crime some. At least enough. 

"No." He replied shortly, stepping over to toss himself back in the pilots chair of the Longsword. "I think we're just getting started." John added, a tone of bitterness in a sentence that was confident for more reasons then one.

The war was just beginning, she thought - 

For her. Not for him, though. She knew better but he /knew/ better.

Sure, Halo was finished. The war with the Covenant would barely be effected by the destruction of one fleet, though - they'd saved a galaxy that was burning alive all around them. 

Cortana was beyond glad he'd taken off his helmet because despite herself, she needed to - not see him? She was inside of his brain & his mind, after all. 

She could see through Johns eyes or see him through the Longswords cameras - even see both at the same time, if she really wanted to experience having two lines of sight at once. 

No, she wanted him to "see" her. To emulate a conversation with line of sight for both of them. 

Cortana needed to exist next to the Spartan ll, physically, in any way she could right now. 

"You would know about that sort of thing." She said nervously, aware that besides some very brief moments in the last few days they were entering new territory. 

The Chief blinked and really /looked/ at her, heartbeat amplifying from his brief worry at the tone of her voice. 

That protectiveness would make her blush if she were able to do so. 

"So would you. You were with me for almost all of this. You were with me on Reach." Was the Spartans observation. Before the ideal amount of time between sentences to make a reply polite had passed, he continued to speak. 

"I'm glad for it, you know. I would have been alone for almost all of this if not. .. thank you for that."

"You know I'm happy to help you, Chief. It's not that I'm not pleased to hear being with you actually did that. It's just."

This would be a large step for them. The A.I. was programmed to be here for him & the other Spartan ll's but it hadn't occurred to her until manning the Pillar of Autumn that that fact implied that she'd need the reverse, as well.

".. I wasn't talking about you being sure that things will go on for us. I'm talking about the war."

".. Oh." Was how John replied, the word almost cut short before he drew the last part of it out. The man blinked and leaned back in his chair, turning his head a bit as his eyes focused on "hers."

"What I meant to say was that you would know better then me and I'm sorry about that. About the war. About everything that's happened here."

She didn't need to but this was the moment where any biological Human would take a breath.

"About.."

There was no easy way to say this but she had to and she knew she had to do so now.

"Everything that's happened to you." The A.I. concluded lamely, spreading her arms apart. "And the other Spartans," she added. 

The Human in front of her was frowning slightly as he took in the words and looked away to stare out of the Longswords window and out into space, letting out a long sigh. 

She was looking at him in two different ways, now. If you only wanted to count literal ones.

Three, actually.

His smile was a visibly pained one as he looked back to "her," leaning forward a bit.

"You didn't even exist then. I know that it's part of your programming but there's nothing to be sorry for. None of it was your fault. It didn't even have anything to do with you until you were born."

She was going to reply to that but actually stopped herself ahead of time, this time. It was obvious that he was going somewhere. 

"Even being a clone of Dr. Hasley." Chief added. "You're not her."

For a moment she thought about the fact that A.I & Human interfacing carried a high chance that the Human "host" could connect back a bit, themselves.

It was either that or how intuitive John was. Maybe both.

"I get that and I'm still sorry, Chief. None of what happened to you. Nothing that's happened to Humanity in the last century has been right or fair. Or good, actually. Plus."

"I care about you past my programming, John."

That had him look at her sideways for a moment. For the first time ever, her friend looked nervous, avoiding "her" eyes by glancing at the window again before looking back again. 

"Well. I think I've figured that one out. Thank you again for the apology, too. I still don't need it. You're part of the team, Cortana. Like I said, it's not your fault that you couldn't help me - or the other Spartans - or anyone before you were around. You know that. You've done nothing but help all of us ever since Hasley-"

He paused. Cortana could actually both see and feel the gears in his brain turning as he rethought what he was about to say.

".. created you, though." 

The word choice was beyond a relief. It was only a few days ago that he'd been wondering how to even talk to her. They'd both come a long way together so far and not in any way they'd expect.

It was part of what was worrying her and she could tell he was searching for the right words to say next. There was a bit of amusement & sadness both, at that - and enough concentration that she might as well be waiting with bated breath. 

Everything he was saying was numbing the wave of emotions she was feeling perfectly, though. 

"I know that you care beyond your programming. Everyone we've fought with in the last few days knew that you did. Dr. Hasley did."

Chief paused, again. 

"Captain Keyes did. Sgt. Johnson. Foehammer. Sgt. Stacker. Dubbo. Bisenti. Mendoza."

What a thing to know that besides Hasley & the Spartans, she was one of the only people to ever hear him swallow a lump in his throat.

"Jenkins. Mckay. Silva. All of them."

It was her turn to concede to a nod as Cortana felt the closest thing to a heart skip she could, spikes of pain hitting her emotional core with every name.

She could turn it off but she didn't. Those names needed to be heard. The Chief obviously needed to say them. 

If things were different, she would tell him that she was in love with him right now. 

"All of them were good people. Amazing people and good soldiers, too. Anything that happened to them isn't any less fair then what happened to me and the other Spartans. It isn't any less fair that we were taken, that all of them died here while I'm still alive. That we are. It isn't any less fair then what's happened to anyone in this war."

All of that was very true. So true, she thought suddenly, that you could take the word and put it in capital letters with dots in between every consonant & vowel. 

Where was he going with this?

"So I'm glad to hear that you care but I don't want you to be sorry. It isn't any less fair then you having to go through all of this either or to be born into it." The man said surely, staring at her with what could be a glare if it wasn't empty of any malice at all.

Cortana felt another spike of pain. It was true and she didn't know how to feel about hearing it from him but she could feel.. Well.

For the first time, thoughts that she couldn't process or understand fully, right now. She squashed all processes halfway and saved them for later. One way she was like a Human was that she could always go back to things like that later, after all. A lot more efficiently, too. 

"You don't even get to really talk to me right now, either. I know that must make you angry, right now. Sad." The man observed. 

"That's /beyond/ not fair. I feel sorry for /you./" 

Christ, she thought. 

"I don't know what to say to that." Was all the A.I could offer, making sure to make her voice just as low as it should be with how she felt, right now. "Except that I don't want you to feel sorry for me either." 

"Good. I don't expect you to." The Spartan said just as quietly. He was almost leaning back in the chair but still hunching over a bit, not seeming to know what sort of body language to display to her.

She checked real quick and realized that he actually didn't. It was in his feelings more then his thoughts. 

"Why?" 

"You weren't wrong about me knowing when things are just getting started. You know that. One thing that means is that I've had a lot of conversations like this before." John told her flatly, reaching up to feel at his face and letting out another long sigh. 

"You're good at them." She told him, which got a short laugh from him. 

"There were a few times in this conversation where I wasn't able to understand what I thought or felt, for the first time in my life." The A.I. revealed to him in a hurry, letting her avatars face and body move not nervously? Yet energized, as the admission brought her right to another thought.

"Well. Sort of. Almost everything I do, say or think has an element of deja vu after all." 

"Because you're a clone of someone. Of Hasley." Chief summed up shortly.

"Right." 

There was a pause.

"Deja." They both said at once and Cortana let out a laugh of her own, spreading her arms to the other Human in the room as they both reached the name of her fellow A.I. 

"Thank you for talking me through this, Chief. I'm sorry, again." 

"Don't be." The Spartan told her. "Halo /is/ finished. That's something. It's a loss but it was a victory, too. We saved Earth. We saved our Galaxy, too." He added, voice turning thoughtful by the end of his sentence. 

"We did, didn't we?" She asked, feeling proud of the both of them. For a moment. 

"I just wish that so many people didn't have to die for it to happen." The A.I. blurted out. 

In the back of her mind, she was relieved. The reprogramming she'd written a few days ago -to make vocal tones display correctly on automatic whenever she was in a moment where she spoke automatically - had worked. 

"I know that there's no way some weren't going to, with us coming here with a Covenant fleet right behind us. It's still horrible."

"You're not the only one whose sorry, you know." Chief observed. 

She put all of her processing power into making sure the pained smile on her face displayed her mixed emotions as accurately as possible, sadness replaced by a brief relief from the shared grief. 

Then Cortana stopped, holographic avatar flashing visibly as she lost control of the program that controlled displaying it.

He wasn't as sorry as her, though. He couldn't be. 

She'd brought them here from combining the coordinates the UNSC - the Chief himself, actually - had discovered on Sigma Octanus IV with the ones her composite had deciphered on Reach.

None of these people would have died. Not the same ones, in the same way. Cortana had lead all of them here. 

She hadn't known about Halo but she'd known there was an alien, artificial world that might be of huge strategic importance to the UNSC that the Covenant might be desperate to control. 

It was her fault. It wasn't her fault.

Oh, Gods. 

It was all her fault everyone on the Pillar of Autumn had died in this system, if nothing else.

She was suddenly aware that the Master Chief was speaking to her.

"- what else is wrong with you? Your avatar went out. Can you hear me? Are you alright?"

After a second, he let his finger poke at the pedestal her hologram had been on.

"Cortana?"

"You're not as sorry as me." She told him over the intercoms & through his up-link only, now. 

"You don't know if that's true." The man said gamely.

"I do."

"How?" He asked, voice full of doubt.

"I. Those rocks you discovered on Sigma Octanus."

"Yes? What about them?"

"I know you found out during your debriefing that they contained coordinates. I was working on a similar set for Dr. Hasley on Reach while it was under attack. Part of me was. It was brought to the Pillar of Autumn right before our last cast-off."

"You brought the Pillar of Autumn here." The man said in a moment of realization. 

"Yes." The A.I. said, feeling total defeat. 

Her emotional core was threatening to overload her core matrix, something she'd only had other A.I's tell her could happen offhand. Yet somehow all of her processes were completely fine as well. She really was hanging onto her partners every word, now.

"You didn't know about Halo, though. Just about the Forerunners?" He guessed.

"... Yes, Chief." Was the repeated statement Cortana ended up giving John, not knowing what else to say.

"That it was probably strategically important and that the Covenant were about to find it, too. That they'd be following the same trail as ONI." 

"Yes, Chief. Of course I would. You know that I would." 

"Then Cortana. You know I know that I can't blame you. Not completely." He said. 

"I wouldn't want to. You haven't been any more in control of what you do in your life then I've been. Not until we got here." The Spartan added.

The A.I now suddenly thinking of herself as - 

\- Hasleys clone and herself -

both of those things - 

found a brief wave of relief at the truth of those words, coming from him. Still, though.

"If I'm only a part of how the Pillar of Autumn arrived here, I'm still a part of it." She told him.

"It would have been some other ship. Think about what would happen if a Covenant fleet got here by itself, Cortana. If they knew all they needed was just one Human to activate the ring."

"I have thought about it." 

"Then you know that you can't blame yourself. A part of how all of this happened or not." 

"I'm still a part of how everyone died even if I didn't murder or kill them." The woman said stubbornly, feeling agitation despite the fact that he was trying to comfort her. 

Part of it was because he was trying to comfort her, actually. She refused to give up responsibility. 

"That's war." Was what her partner told her in reply. "We've all had to face that thought one way or another about our brothers and sisters."

She actually felt another brief moment where her processes almost failed her. Was that how this worked?

Or more accurately - was this how it felt to realize that was how this worked?

"If you had a few moments already where you didn't know how to feel or what to think, you're going to have more and more of them. You see why you being an A.I. doesn't make you any less Human then us? It's not just war, Cortana. It's life." 

"I'm not alive." She said instantly.

"You are." Was the Chiefs answer, his own voice just as stubborn, now. 

Hm.

"We're going to have a lot more conversations like this, aren't we?" The few days born, 60 something asked suddenly.

She knew how a question like that coming out of nowhere must sound and found that she didn't care - despite how humiliating it was - that she couldn't hide the disappointment and hurt in her voice at all.

"I told you we're just getting started." He said - reaching out, the Master Chief pretended to prod at Cortanas head, earning an amazed and nervous laugh from her.

"I wouldn't mind if we kept talking if you wanted, either." Was his suggestion. 

"If you don't need to..?" She halfway asked, halfway said.

The man shrugged, a genuine smile on his face now. It was strange. He looked a lot younger, suddenly.

"I'd like to just think for a while." She added.

There were a number of reasons she didn't want to examine as to why she allowed the light from the holographic projector to show her stepping off of it so she could "sit" down, "leaning" against one of the Longswords controls to look over at him.

The naked curiosity on both of their faces was clear.

"Right now I think I'll be fine as long as you are." He said. 

"At least for a while. We'll need to find a way out of this system eventually." Were the two thoughtful observations John had as he looked to the viewport, again.

"Somehow I don't think either of us is going to mind a break for a while, though." He added.

Cortana laughed and gave him the largest smile she could figure out how to process for a Human without it coming off as unsettling.

Which would be quite a feat, given the size she was displayed at right now, compared to him.

She was going to wave him off and then cut the hologram out but instead she turned her avatar so that it was "looking" away from him, its arms spread to the room around them.

"You're right. Thanks for remembering that there are two of us in here now, Chief."

"One of the saddest things about my life is actually the fact that I have perfect recall at any time, if I let myself." The man said suddenly.

The way his voice cracked sounded almost identical to how hers had, a few minutes ago.

"It means I can remember anything, though." He added, voice sliding into a tease.

"Remember that there's two of us in /here/ now too, then." She said, pointing up at his forehead. 

"I will." John said seriously, giving her a brief salute before leaning back in his chair and crossing his arms, watching her with a curious expression.

Were they done?

"Good." Cortana told him, feeling a small sense of satisfaction as she thought of the fact that she was letting herself lay down to rest both literally and figuratively.

Her avatar was moved as if it was set to sleep, the now paused projection on an automatic display as she started shutting off functions one after the other, starting with visual sensory data. 

She was safe with him, with Covenant or not. He was safe with her, Covenant or not.

For now they could actually be safe to be around each other and that felt like it meant everything. Right now.

"Something tells me that you're actually asleep in a way, right now. Functioning halfway?"

"Basically." Was Cortanas tired reply as she gave the Chief a dismissive wave.

"Good. I'll let you know when I'm done doing the same thing, then."

"I'll be waiting." She said, starting the process of putting enough of her programs on loops and reprogramming enough to the point where she could emulate- no - so that she was as close to half asleep as she could get.

It was finally over.

Well. It was finished. For now, at least.

She found herself as content about that as she figured it was possible to be right now.

There was the Covenant but there was still the UNSC as well and there was the Forerunners, too. Humanity & the alien species they'd encountered had a common origin there that might be able to be used, now. 

On that tact, there'd been the Precursors & maybe even more then them, as well.

Her and the Master Chief? Her and John would have a lot to talk about. Cortana would make absolutely sure of the safety they'd need for that, as long as she was ''alive.'' 

It was with beyond mixed feelings Cortana realized that definitely had nothing to do with programming because the next thought forming in her head was this; 

Maybe if Humanity won, the A.I. could even figure out a way for her to be able to give him the kiss and the long hug that he'd deserve, then. 

''That he deserved from her right now.'' 

He'd appreciate it as much as he could and she squashed where that thought was going - 

but didn't delete it.

The Longsword was suddenly so, so quiet besides her and Johns breathing and Cortana found out that she was as alright with silence between them as she could be.

For right now, at least.


End file.
